Newton would gladly have equipped his theory with hooks and eyes-material causes-but could devise none sufficient to hold the planets in their orbits.įormal causes are logical maps. This was a difficult position for Newton to adopt, for as a mechanical philosopher he abhorred occult (and thus ad hoc) accounts. Newton's great achievement was to give credibility to such models absent material causes: For him, there were no “hooks and eyes” to gravity-“Hypothesis is no part of my designe”-just naked math. Jachmann and van den Assem's (1996) “causal ethological analysis” of the courtship behavior of a wasp exemplifies this meaning of cause. Efficient causes identify the early parts of a sequence that are essential for the later parts they tell us what initiates a change of state. Philosophers such as Hume, Mill, and Mackie have clarified the criteria for identifying various efficient causal relations (e.g., necessity, sufficiency, insufficient but necessary events in the context of otherwise sufficient events). In Aristotle's framework, efficient causes are triggers, events that bring about an “effect.” This is the contemporary meaning of cause. Although ancient, Aristotle's four (be)causes provide an invaluable framework for modern scientific explanation, and in particular for resolution of the current debate about learning.
238), his four “becauses ” were derogated as an incoherent treatment of causality ( Hocutt, 1974). Because of mistranslation and misinterpretation by “learned babblers” ( Santayana, 1957, p. 1929) described four kinds of explanation.